I’m thrilled to share this radio interview featuring my colleague Tama Leaver and I speaking with ABC RN Life Matters on young children in viral social media videos.

In this segment, we discuss the rise of viral videos starring very young children, how they are being co-opted into TV talk shows (i.e. The Ellen DeGeneres Show), and how parents (unwittingly or deliberately) play a part in such sensational celebrity.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Josh Nicholas for The Conversation to provide expert commentary on the Influencer industry. Specifically, we chatted about how Influencers differ from mainstream media celebrities who are prolific on social media, the ecology of Influencers and micro-Influencers, and Influencers who are crossing over to mainstream media industries.

While updating my personal archive of news relating to the Influencer industry, I decided to highlight a few significant developments in Q1-Q2 of 2017 in this short round-up.

With its historical beginnings rooted in bedroom camming culture in the North American late-1990s and the online selling culture in the South East Asian early-2000s, the Influencer industry is its vernacular and institutionalised formats is more than a decade old today.

Yet, for all their progress and advancements across several industry verticals and areas of society, present-day news reports seem to be stuck in a backdated timeloop as they continually express surprise at the fact that Influencers can command sizable earning and brands want to work with them, assert that the Influencer industry is somehow mysterious and a secret weapon, and reiterate that the Influencer industry is simultaneously on the rise and on the decline. That’s quite the obsession over the financial aspect of Influencers. But is there much else?